
On August 24, Nintendo officially revealed the console to the public in a presentation, revealing the Japanese and North American launch dates, in addition to revealing that 10 games would be available as launch games for the system. On August 21, 2000, IGN showed off images of a GBA development kit running a demonstrational port of Yoshi Story, and on August 22, pre-production images of the GBA were revealed in an issue of Famitsu magazine in Japan. Simultaneously, Nintendo announced a partnership with Konami to form Mobile 21, a development studio that would focus on creating technology for the GBA to interact with the GameCube, Nintendo's home console which was also in development at the time under the name "Dolphin". Nintendo teased that the handheld would first be released in Japan in August 2000, with the North American and European launch dates slated for the end of the same year. On September 1, 1999, Nintendo officially announced the Game Boy Advance, revealing details about the system's specifications including online connectivity through a cellular device and an improved model of the Game Boy Camera. An improved version of the GBC with wireless online connectivity was codenamed the Advanced Game Boy (AGB), and a brand-new 32-bit system was not set for release until the following year. News of a successor to the Game Boy Color (GB/GBC) first emerged at the Nintendo Space World trade show in late August 1999, where it was reported that two new handheld systems were in development.

It was designed by the French designer Gwénaël Nicolas and his Tokyo-based design studio Curiosity Inc. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, was released in November 2004 and is backward compatible with Game Boy Advance software.Ĭontrary to the previous Game Boy models, which have the "portrait" form factor of the original Game Boy (designed by Gunpei Yokoi), the Game Boy Advance was designed in a "landscape" form factor, putting the buttons to the sides of the device instead of below the screen.
#Gameboy advanced brighter screen mod series
Around the same time, the final redesign, the Game Boy Micro, was released in September 2005.Īs of June 2010, 81.51 million units of the Game Boy Advance series have been sold worldwide. A newer revision of the redesign was released in 2005, with a backlit screen. The original model does not have an illuminated screen Nintendo addressed that with the release of a redesigned model with a frontlit screen, the Game Boy Advance SP, in 2003. The GBA is part of the sixth generation of video game consoles. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, 2001, and in mainland China as iQue Game Boy Advance on June 8, 2004. (He’s sold out for now, though.The Game Boy Advance ( GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color.

Wirth said he spent upward of $140 in all, but Grimmett is taking orders to do the whole job for you for $200.

Thankfully for prospective modders, Grimmett now sells pre-modified shells for $20. Removing the LCD metal frame also makes a huge difference.” “You need to take off nearly a mm of width from the front. “Removing a lot more plastic is a must with this build,” Grimmett wrote. However, Grimmett left a comment on Wirth’s video to explain that he had come up with a solution that worked perfectly - it just required an even more drastic elimination of material from within the shell. That was even after he took steps like scooping out a whole bunch of plastic and shaving down contacts on the circuit board. The heart of Grimmett’s kit is a $40 custom-made ribbon cable that converts the GBC’s output so that the GBA SP’s display can read it.īecause the SP’s screen is larger and thicker than the GBC’s display, Wirth wasn’t able to get everything to fit inside the original shell of the GBC.
#Gameboy advanced brighter screen mod mod
The mod swaps out the Game Boy Color’s built-in screen for the backlit LCD of the upgraded Game Boy Advance SP, the AGS-101 model, which was released about two and a half years after the original GBA SP’s debut.

Wirth used a backlight setup provided by Ben “BennVenn” Grimmett, a longtime Nintendo hardware tinkerer. That has finally changed with a new hardware mod, which you can see come together in a video from Colin Wirth at the YouTube channel This Does Not Compute. Over the years, Nintendo fans have retrofitted all the company’s handhelds aside from the Game Boy Color with backlit displays.
